I saw a Bald Eagle fly past in Winnipeg yesterday. Now, it’s been cold this winter - several weeks of -20 to -30, and lots of snow. The river is completely iced over, to a depth 30 cm at least. There is not a great deal of wildlife around.
So my question is - what do these guys eat? Mice, small birds? Scavenge dead deer? The bird flew across the river close to where they nest in the summer, so it may have been here all winter. Can anyone shed some light on this question?
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Yes. They do eat small animals and definitely scavenge dead deer. I live in northern Michigan and have observed these behaviors
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Dead waterfowl also … probably any dead critter. Years ago I saw one steal a Snow Goose carcass from a Golden Eagle. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/477616 . But the winter conditions were very mild (no snow).
Still, you’d think under those severe winter conditions as described above it would still be a major challenge to find any food.
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In October or November of last year (so considerably warmer and much further south) I saw an eagle on my way to work eating a deer (roadkill) each morning for 2-3 days until someone moved the deer. What fascinated me was this was almost in a housing development. My brother saw one eating a deer in a more rural area in the winter. Until these two incidents, I had thought eagles only ate prey they captured. Now they kind of remind me of vultures and crows.
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This is a fun article that compares them to pigeons. Not very majestic:
https://www.wired.com/story/corey-arnold-aleutian-dreams/
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It seems very few to no one likes dead porcupine. Except, of course, insects!
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Lots of interesting articles have been written about them over the years. National Geographic and Audubon are two I remember vaguely that stuck out.
Google ‘Bald Eagle at Landfill’ and see where you go.
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Welcome to the forum! That was one of the areas I considered. I do know that Gulls and Canada Geese hang out there! And it’s not that far from where I saw it, as the eagle flies (so to speak).
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Thank you!
Yah, watching them over the years has been very interesting.
We have them in a variety of locations local to my area and surrounding the Pacific Northwest. We’ve seen them through a bunch of different experiences, but the fighting for territory is amazing…
And when they upset the humming birds.
(Humming birds win by a wide margin)
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In the midwest when the rivers ice over, they congregate anywhere the water is still accessible, particularly at lock and dams along the Mississippi where the turbulence stops ice from forming. There can be hundreds at one spot when it gets very cold. We get so many because the come down from further North, but I’m sure some stay in Canada wherever there’s enough food or scavenge.
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An intriguing paper - https://canadianbirdstrike.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Elliott_et_al_2006.pdf
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We created an observation of a Bald Eagle catching road kill in traffic. Here is the short video linked in the observation: https://youtu.be/4on2qooC7jM
And we captured a winter Bald Eagle (Minnesota) with a squirrel beside an ice rink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSoMori4BxI
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Interesting methodology and findings. And as the article indicated, the fella in the photo I shared was resting, which supposedly is the majority of adult time spent at the landfill. :)
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There’s a whole festival here where people come to watch the eagles that gather to eat the afterbirth in calving pastures in January. https://www.carsonvalleynv.org/eagles-ag/
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In my neck of the woods (Northwestern Ontario, Canada), most Bald Eagles appear to get through the winter as dump scavengers. On the annual Christmas Bird Count in Atikokan, we’ve counted as many as 61 Bald Eagles at the town’s landfill site.
An exception may be the handful of Bald Eagles that overwinter at or near Point Park in Fort Frances, Ont. A section of the river under the railway bridge to Ranier, Minnesota, remains open year-round. Most winters, a small flock of Common Goldeneye ducks stays straight through the season by using that open patch to feed. The Eagles can prey on the ducks (and Rock Pigeons), or catch a fish there.
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Since you are so close to me, you probably have had similar winter weather. I should probably go out to the landfill and check it out. There might be some open water north of here at Lockport, but nothing locally. Thanks!
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All of the bald eagles I have seen in Southwest Alaska in winter have been dump scavengers hanging out with ravens. Similar to Winnipeg in that there is heavy snow cover and thick ice this time of year.
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